Bris­tol cel­e­brate pro­mo­tion in style against Don­caster

LUKE Mo­ra­han scored four tries to cel­e­brate his 28th birth­day and en­sure Bris­tol’s pro­mo­tion party went with a mighty bang.

Don­caster had won on their three pre­vi­ous vis­its to Ash­ton Gate but there was never a chance they would make it four as the Wal­laby in­ter­na­tional tore them apart.

Mo­ra­han said: “We haven’t put on a de­cent per­for­mance at home for a while so we needed one.

“I’m look­ing for­ward to the step up next sea­son as Pat (Lam) has cre­ated a be­lief in this squad.”

Bris­tol’s head coach, Lam, said: “Luke stud­ies the game and he’s buy­ing in to what we are try­ing to achieve here.

“The boys were deter­mined to pro­duce a per­for­mance that they could be proud of and we are ex­tremely happy to be back in the Pre­mier­ship as we want to fill this sta­dium.”

Bris­tol’s big­gest crowd of the sea­son were treated to some su­perb han­dling and the only blot on a mem­o­rable oc­ca­sion was David Lemi’s fail­ure to add to his record of 70 tries on his 140th and fi­nal ap­pear­ance for the club be­fore he joins Rouen.

His team mates did their best to seal Lemi’s night with a try but all the pos­ses­sion went Mo­ra­han’s way be­fore the Samoan de­parted to a stand­ing ova­tion with a few min­utes re­main­ing.

Lemi said: “A try would have been a bonus but it’s been a bless­ing for me to be part of this beau­ti­ful club.”

Lam said: “David comes from a very small is­land so it’s re­mark­able what he has achieved as he has been a tremen­dous am­bas­sador for this club, both on and off the field.”

Bris­tol had other depart- ing he­roes who im­pressed with both Williams, Jor­dan and Rho­dri, carv­ing huge holes in a por­ous Don­caster de­fence while props Sione Tonga’uiha and Gas­ton Cortes marked their exit with a try apiece.

Cortes was first on the score­board from a driv­ing line-out be­fore Dougie Flock­hart re­sponded with a penalty as Knights kept their op­po­nents in check for the first quar­ter.

Then the flood­gates opened as Bris­tol scored seven tries in 22 min­utes ei­ther side of half-time with Mo­ra­han com­plet­ing a hat-trick and Tonga’uiha, Siale Pi­u­tau, Ala­p­ati Leiua

and Sam Jef­fries also on the score sheet.

Rho­dri Williams should have been on that list but the scrum half missed the op­por­tu­nity to score the try of the night by div­ing for the line too early and knock­ing on af­ter a 75m run.

A cricket score ap­peared likely but Bris­tol re­laxed and scored only two tries in the fi­nal quar­ter, a fourth for Mon­a­han and one to atone for his er­ror from Williams with Les­ley Klim’s ef­fort for Don­caster, a mere con­so­la­tion.

Don­caster di­rec­tor of rugby, Clive Grif­fiths said: “They were on it and we were off as we were empty hav­ing given so much in last week’s win over Eal­ing.

“We have a small squad, they have a huge one and they were clin­i­cal but I’m not go­ing to crit­i­cise the boys af­ter all they’ve been through over the past two months.”